Comments

Revised Common Lectionary Commentary

Clippings:
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany - February 24, 2019

Saint Dominiccontemplating the Scriptures

Author's note:Sometimes I have material left over when I edit Comments down to
fit the available space. This page presents notes that landed on the clipping
room floor. Some may be useful to you. While I avoid technical language
in the Comments (or explain special terms), Clippings may have unexplained
jargon from time to time.

A hypertext Glossary of Terms is integrated with Clippings. Simply
click on any highlighted word in the text and a pop-up window will appear
with a definition. Bibliographic references are also integrated in the
same way.

Verse 5: “angry”:
FoxMoses translates the Hebrew as upset – at each other, or referring
to each individual’s feelings of guilt.

Verse 5: “to preserve life”: Not only of the famine-stricken
Egyptians but also of a “remnant” (v.
7), i.e. the family/clan which is the bearer of the promise to Abraham. See
12:2-3;
50:24. [
NOAB]

Verse 7: “remnant”:
NJBC finds use of this word puzzling. It is found only here in the
Pentateuch but it is common in Isaiah where it is paired with survivors
, as it here: see Isaiah
10:20;
37:32. Joseph’s family is not a remnant in the sense the word is used later.

Verse 8: “a father to Pharaoh”: It is known as the title of
an Egyptian vizier. The word is also used in this sense in Isaiah
22:21 (Eliakim is made “a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to
the house of Judah”) and 1 Maccabees
11:32 (Lasthenes was probably governor under King Demetrius) [
NOAB]

Verse 10: “the land of Goshen”: The present Wadi Tumilat,
a narrow strip of grazing land in the Nile delta, adjacent to what is now the Suez
Canal. [
NOAB]

Verse 10: Comments: There they will be “near” (v.
10) him: this and other clues in this chapter place the story in time: the royal
court was in lower Egypt during two periods; the Hyksos period (1720-1550 BC) fits
this and other data in the story: During the Hyksos period, the land was under
pro-Semitic rule, so Joseph could well rise to the rank of prime minister. [
NOAB] See also
41:39-41 (only Pharaoh is greater than Joseph).

Verse 12: “eyes ... eyes ...see”: By placing the emphasis
on seeing, Joseph ensures that the brothers will be reliable witnesses to Jacob that
he is powerful. [
NJBC]

Verse 13: “how greatly I am honoured”:
FoxMoses translates the Hebrew as all the weight I carry, i.e. my importance.

Verse 15: “his brothers talked with him”: Something they could
not do peaceably in
37:4. [
NJBC]

Verses 16-20: A curious aside about how Pharaoh came to know about the
arrival of Joseph’s brothers. It is strange for two reasons:

Pharaoh tells Joseph what arrangements to make immediately after Joseph
has given his own commission to the brothers, and

46:31-47:6 gives the impression that Pharaoh there receives the news for the
first time. So we probably have multiple traditions here. [
NJBC]

Verse 18: “the fat of the land”: Literally
the best things. The anticipated bounties of settling in Egypt are brought
out by this phrase, “the best of all the land” (v.
20) and “the good things of Egypt”, all of which are the same phrase
in the Hebrew – and by the repeated exhortation to “come” (vv.
18,
19). [
FoxMoses]

Verse 20: “Give no thought to your possessions”:
FoxMoses translates the Hebrew as Let your eyes not look-with-regret,
possibly meaning do not stint.

Verse 22: “but to Benjamin ...”: This is the same situation
as in Chapter
37, but this time the brothers do not react adversely to the favouring of the
youngest son. [
FoxMoses]

Verse 27: “they told him all the words of Joseph”: In Chapter
37, they are damaging, but here they are life-giving. [
FoxMoses]

In
26:1-2, God has forbidden Isaac to go to Egypt during a famine, but his son Jacob
may now go as part of the divine plan, his people’s destiny. [
FoxMoses]

Psalm 37:1-12,39-40

This series of proverbial injunctions to the faithful rehearses themes of God’s
punishment of the wicked and his reward of the righteous whose way of life manifests
generosity and the loving care of God. [
CAB]

That this psalm is in acrostic form (with each stanza beginning with a successive
letter of the Hebrew alphabet) explains the lack of a clear outline and lack of logical
progression of thought. [
NOAB] [
NJBC]

Verse 2: Recall Isaiah
40:7: “The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord
blows upon it; surely the people are grass”. The heat of the sun may also be
the cause. [
JBC]

Verse 9: “inherit the land”: Leviticus
25:23 says that the land belongs to
Yahweh and is his to allot to whom he will. Recall Deuteronomy
11:8-22: “Keep, then, this entire commandment that I am commanding you
today, so that you may have strength to go in and occupy the land that you are crossing
over to occupy, and so that you may live long in the land ...” and God’s
command to Abram in Genesis
12:1. [
NOAB]

Verse 11: “the meek”: The Hebrew word originally meant
overwhelmed by want but came to have a religious meaning: those who are aware
of their dependence on God. [
NJBC] Jesus quotes this verse as one of the
Beatitudes: see Matthew
5:5. [
NOAB]

Verses 11-15: The wicked and their unsuccessful persecution of the godly.
[
JBC]

Verse 34: “Wait for the Lord
”: Patient waiting for Yahweh to act is the proper attitude, not querulous
anxiety. See also
38:15;
62:1,
5;
130:5; Isaiah
40:31. [
NOAB]

Verses 35-36: The prosperity of the wicked is transitory and unsubstantial.
[
JBC]

1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

Verses 35-36: The diatribe-style questions are really an objection. [
NJBC] He imagines an objector whom he refutes with an epithet common to that
literary form, “Fool!”. Nature itself shows that the death of a seed
is not an obstacle, but a condition for its passage to a higher and richer life.
[
JBC]

Verse 35: “With what sort of body do they come?”: This question
was first raised in Judaism in 2 Baruch, a book written some 30 years after 1 Corinthians. [
NJBC]

Verse 39: God provides every being with a body adapted to the circumstances
of its existence. [
JBC]

Verses 40-41: “glory”: The Greek word is doxa. It has
a range of meanings, including brightness, radiance and reflection
(of God’s power). [
JBC] It is true that earthly beings do not manifest their “glory”
by emitting (or reflecting) light. The sun, moon and stars do not shine with equal
brightness. [
Blk1Cor]

Verse 40: “heavenly bodies”: In Jewish tradition, stars were
considered to be animate beings: see 1 Enoch 18:13-16 and
Philo. [
NJBC]

Verse 44: “physical”: The Greek word is psychikon,
the instrument of the psyche, which is the principle of mortal existence.
Blk1Cor translates it as natural, in the sense of as found in nature
. “Being” (v.
45) translates psyche, which could be conceived as a purely material principle
of animation: see
Philo. In the
Septuagint translation of Genesis
2:7, God makes Adam “a living being”, psyche. Earthly being
would have been a less ambiguous expression, but Paul has already used it (and its
antithesis) in another sense in v.
40. [
NJBC]

Verse 44b: Paul begins to answer the question: how do we know that there
is in fact a resurrection body? The form of his thesis implies that he has some common
ground with his opponents which he can use as a starting point. In order to reconcile
the two accounts of creation, Philo distinguished the heavenly man of Genesis
1 from the earthly man of Genesis
2, and argued that the second historical man was a copy of the first ideal man.
Paul accepts the distinction but maintains (obviously with Christ in mind) that the
relationship should be understood differently. [
NJBC]

Verse 44b: “spiritual body”: This is a transformed mode of
being, not merely a resuscitation of the physical corpse. [
CAB] It is the human body as adapted by the Spirit of God for a completely different
mode of existence. [
NJBC]

Verse 45: “the last Adam”: In Jewish theology, the end of
the world will be like the beginning, so Adam has a role in the end-times: see 1 Enoch 85-90; Apocalypse of Moses 21:16; 39:2; 41:1-3. So Paul is able to present
Christ as “the last Adam”. Through his resurrection, he became Lord (Paul
says in Romans
14:9: “For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be
Lord of both the dead and the living”) so he is “life-giving”.
[
NJBC]

Verse 45: “The first man, Adam”: By adding “Adam”
to the citation of Genesis
2:7b, Paul accepts the historical character of Adam, but in adding “first”
he departs from Philo’s view (given above). [
NJBC]

Verse 46: To
Philo, the heavenly man of Genesis
1 was both incorporeal and incorruptible, so his body could be described as “spiritual”,
but to Paul “spiritual” could only describe the risen body of Christ.
[
NJBC]

Verses 48-49: Paul reiterates the thoughts of vv.
21-22 but from a slightly different perspective. Adam and Christ both represent
a possibility of human existence, possibilities that are real since all are what
Adam was and can become what Christ is. [
NJBC] Note Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians
3:18: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord
as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one
degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit”. [
JBC]

Verse 50: Jeremias, the great scholar, sees the two parts of this verse
as complimentary, because he takes “flesh and blood” as meaning the living,
and “the perishable” as meaning those who have already died, but it is
perhaps more likely that “the perishable” explains why “flesh and
blood” are incompatible with an eternal kingdom. [
NJBC]

Verse 28: Jesus gives the greatest example of this on the cross, if
23:34 is authentic. [
NOAB] This verse, per the NRSV footnote, is not in all manuscripts.
BlkLk suggests that
23:34 was omitted from some due to the conviction, common in Gentile Christian
circles, that God did not forgive the Jews for the crucifixion, but punished them
for it by the destruction of Jerusalem.

Verse 29: “offer the other also ...”: This flies in the face
of the natural tendency to place self-protection first. [
NJBC]

Verse 29: “do not withhold even your shirt”: Only a tunic
and coat were worn, so Jesus advises (at least as an image) stripping oneself naked.
[
NJBC]

Verse 30: Matthew
5:42 says “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone
who wants to borrow from you”, a less radical command. [
NJBC]

Verse 31: Luke’s audience (in the Gentile world) would have known
the cultural ethic: if you receive something, reciprocate. Vv.
32-36 provide an interpretation of this verse which makes clear that Jesus expects
much more. [
NJBC]

Verses 35c-36: As God stands to the needy world with the gracious gift
of salvation, so disciples should stand to the poor of society in generous open-handedness.
[
NJBC]

Verses 37-38: Matthew
7:1-2 says: “‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with
the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure
you get.’”. [
NOAB]

Verse 37: “forgive”:
NJBC says that “forgive” is not a good translation because it suggests
forgiving one who wrongs you. The Greek word has economic force, so he offers
pardon your debtors and you will be pardoned.

Verse 38: “lap”:
BlkLk translates the Greek word as bosom. He says that this is the full
part of the garment above the girdle which could serve as a pocket.